Black Doggerel

yayyy Silvercon!

so much fun, a weekend with old friends and new ones and also getting my brain shagged out, hurrah!

and I beat watervole at Articulate twice because I am shit-hot, oh yeah! *grin*

...don't expect anything coherent from me till tomorrow. knackered, on a huge serotonin/adrenalin high, and so much for resting the arm. I'm a bit afraid it may drop off in the night. Which would almost be a relief. Maybe when I grow up I'll learn not to overdo things. It's unlikely.


...but it was well worth it.

Vacuum cleaner - not dead! Flat is still far from immaculate or even moderately clean, but at least it's no longer lined in ankle-deep black and white fur like a giant badger den. That's just one thing that makes me happy.

topbit - will be at Mum's. Not up to the extra walking today.


:-D

Am back. Did you notice I was gone?

I spent the weekend at "Silvercon" - aka watervole and waveney's 25th wedding anniversary celebration. And it was bloody fabulous. I've made some excellent new friends (hi entorien!) and reunited with some older ones that I haven't seen in 20-odd years - George, who was one of the best men at my wedding (we had two) his mother Jay, Howard, Bill...um, and others, I think, but I'm so overwhelmed I'm not going to remember any more names. Gaming geeks and fine people, every one - we had an absolute blast.

It was weird, though. I got on a number 133 bus to get there, but when I got off it had become the TARDIS - I'd been concerned I wouldn't remember the way to the house from the bus stop, or the right stop to get off, but my feet and my eyes simply reverted back to 20 years ago when I worked from that house and got off at that stop every day - I couldn't have mistaken it any more than I could my own front door. George (who worked with me back then) said exactly the same.

Even weirder was the essential unchangedness of Waveney. Sure, the office was a little more full of equipment, the faces were a little older, the wisteria and ivy in the garden cover a lot more than they did, the garden's sprouted a pond that wasn't there when it was used by small children and the house has sprouted a truly magnificent selection of mobiles - but it felt the same, it smelt the same (a distinctive papery scent, like a clean second-hand bookshop) and the faces all wore the extra years lightly. Even Henry and Kelvin, who've changed more in the intervening years than any of the rest of us, were still essentially the same charming, adorable smart arses they were when I first met them... and that was when Kelvin was five and Henry wasn't talking or walking yet.

It ought to have made me feel old - it didn't. It made me feel - not rejuvenated, but timeless; it made the years irrelevant and powerless. It was beautiful.

( Pictures under the cut )

Got a lift home from a new friend, Dave, and discovered two things - first, that Squish, Master of Disaster, had lived up to his name and disembowelled my mother's green leather sofa. Luckily, after the first few moments of shock, I discovered that he hadn't actually damaged the leather - he'd pulled the sofa cushions onto the floor, ripped into the fabric on the backs of the leather cushions and extracted a fair bit of stuffing, but once I'd stuffed it back in and covered the ripped parts with duct tape, nothing showed at all.

And then while my mother was guilt tripping me and declaring that she was never having the dogs in her house again, (which would have meant lifelong celibacy and never leaving my flat again) I discovered that she'd forgotten to feed them the night before - which not only enabled me to guilt trip her right back, but explained the reason for the attempted sofacide. Poor Squish. I hope to hell he didn't swallow much of the stuffing.

So very tired. So very happy.